More Flag Bags

I was looking through my craft supplies and found these really cool patches I had bought for my son about 10 years ago. I had meant to sew them onto a jean jacket he once had, but I never got around to it and they eventually wound up in a craft box.
Well, since I hadn't made any flag bags for these countries yet, I decided to use them and make purses for these four countries.




France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
(Images are clickable for enlargement).






One side has the patch, the other side is simply the flag as it is. Each of the smaller flag bags is 7 inches by 10 inches.
Since the French stripes go up and down, I did this one starting at the side and working across. (It was a lot easier for color changing at the end of the rows instead of having three colors to deal with going from top to bottom).






Germany's colors are listed as black, red, and gold. However, I have a skein of Red Heart gold see here, and it wasn't the right color as the photos I googled of Germany's flag. So I used yellow. I hope no one minds. It's the exact color as in the patch.
With the patch on, this flag resembles their official flag of Federal authorities, (if you took off the name of their country which is on the patch). Here's a photo from wikipedia with the two flags.






I like how the patches have the countries spelled in their language as well as English. With the patch on, the flag resembles Austria's state flag. (If you took off the country's name on the patch). You can see a photo of their state flag here.
Once I finished crocheting the graph (twice) in one continuous piece, I folded it over and crocheted around them with a black border. So, the border is actually holding the purse together. Black makes the flags colors stand out nicely.
The handle/strap is simply front post double crochet, back post double crochet. It makes it nice and strong.






Switzerland was the most difficult. Oh sure. It looks easy enough. A square. BUT, with tunisian afghan stitching, the stitch is a bit longer than it is wide. So, even though all the rows are their correct amount in length and height, it still isn't a perfect square. It measures 13 inches wide by 15 inches long. Ahhh! And to top it off, I ran out of the bold red yarn. I had to use a different red, (cherry red), on one side. (I also checked here to find out that the red color is not standardized. So I thought it would be ok. This strap is longer and you can actually wear the strap completely across your head and chest. I used a third red color yarn for the strap and border. Its Caron One Pounder in claret, (the other was scarlet).

So, anyway, this is how they wound up. I wish I took the photos outside as it is dificult to see the colors properly with flash photography.